Saturday, December 17, 2005

So Intelligent Design will be taught in textbooks and schools after all...

It's a rather deceptive page in that textbook, as note the associations that are drawn as well as what is broken apart epistemically and what is left alone. This bit of metaphoric excrement: "A tremendous weight of evidence supports the idea...that life on Earth has existed for nearly 4 billion years and has undergone dramatic change during that time, and...this change has occured through the mechanism of evolution by natural selection." is a good example. It's deceptive in using teleological language about "selections" being made when Darwinism is a rather random denial that anything is actually selecting anything. The notion that all of the diversity of Life is explained by natural selection and this notion is supported by a "tremendous weight of evidence" is a lie on a par with Haeckel's frauds. Let's just call a spade, a spade, these blurred empistemic associations from "great age" to "natural selection is explanatory for the origin of all" communicate a lie that is equal to: "Evolution is just like the theory of gravity."

On the other hand, note how creationism is broken apart epistemically by the writer in the usual way: "...there are differences of interpretation about creation." There has been and are plenty of differences of "interpretations" of the notions and creation myths typical to Darwinism, yet they are not mentioned and instead it is portrayed as a monolithic "scientific fact." They ought to be mentioned, students would learn a lot more about how we think about things that way.

But back to the textbook: "It is the scientific quest for a natural understanding of life--embodied in the theory of evolution--that has led to the discovery of genetics, DNA, and virtually all modern medicine."

Funny thing, how the Augustinian monk Gregor Mendel was not a Darwinist and yet that did not prevent him from discovering heredity nor was a Creationist stopped from advancing a theory of natural selection despite their failure to adhere to the Darwinian principle of treating natural selection as elastic enough to be some sort of be all, end all. And would Mendel's version of heredity be predicted by Darwinism or were the "predictions" added later, does it even comport with Darwinian expectations?

I wonder if the MTVeee generation will be easily wowed by yet another charlatan glomming their ideas on to anything from genetics or microwaves to "virtually all modern medicine" ...and probably toilet paper too. Virtually all of modern medicine, what a canard that is.

It's not as if we are using our own technology, creativity and intelligent designs to understand in some small way the creativity and understanding already in use in things like the technology of our own visual system. No, it was the Darwinian naturalistic narrative of the ancestry of the eye in a gooey spot on the head that led to glasses. This is generally the case when it comes to progress because it was the theory of goo that is ancestral to all which is responsible for virtually all scientia/knowledge and technology. So there will be no progress, medicine, nor glasses or toilet paper without Darwinism!

Unfortunately, the theory has about the same consistency and integrity as the ancient mud puddle sometimes said to be our common ancestor* in the Darwinian creation myth, so if one makes an attack on it in a philosophically principled or empirical and scientific way by noting that the empirical evidence goes against the supposed creativity of random mutation and natural selection then the charlatans who support the theory of goo will shift, shift on over to something else. There is always the age of the earth or the trusty argument that we wouldn't have airplanes and things if not for their creation myth.

*Note that some Indian creation myths make more sense, at least they began with a living reed in the mud puddle that gave birth to all.